BRAND FEATURE

— COTTON CANDY BRAND FEATURE

BACK TO THE ROOTS

2022 may be drawing to a close, but there are big changes afoot for Düsseldorf-based fashion label Cotton Candy in autumn/ winter 2023. The company is planning to return to its classic pre-order system for the coming ordering season and is doing away with its short-notice orders from April 2023. But what changes, and above all challenges, will this move bring for the brand?

INTERVIEW KRISTIN WALZEL

Düsseldorf brand Cotton Candy has always worked closely with its suppliers and can look back on a long history of solid partnerships. In the past few months, however, the ‘just-intime’ label has been left to suffer at the hands of the fashion industry’s ailing system. The aftermath of COVID and rising inflation have meant that, despite good turnover with the brand’s products, retailers haven’t always been in a position to fulfil their partnership obligations. This is why Cotton Candy will be switching its system back to the classic pre-orders from January for the autumn/winter 2023 season. “Parallel to the classic AW23 pre-orders in January, we will be offering our short-term orders for the last time in January with drops for February 2023, March 2023 and April 2023,” explains Ümit Ekinci, Cotton Candy’s CEO.

A POSITIVE TRANSITION

Cotton Candy has a number of reasons for making this change to their order system: the short notice they were offering wasn’t always honoured by customers and retailers, and drops were being skipped due to a lack of budget, even though the products were popular. “Another reason is that our short-notice order periods often overlapped with the main deliveries of many pre-order suppliers, which also had a negative impact on our trade, depending on the business situation and weather conditions,” Ekinci continues.

LOOKING AHEAD

In order to get their wholesale business back on track and restore agency business to pre-COVID levels, this is a decision that Cotton Candy made over the past 24 months. They are also pursuing other measures such as their Be-Premium scheme. “Since 1 June 2022, customers who help us plan better and work closely alongside us as partners will be able to enjoy a number of attractive benefits,” says Ekinci. The company is also planning on introducing marketing measures in social media and separating its wholesale and online collections. Since the pandemic, online sales have risen steadily. Cotton Candy’s online revenues are currently more than 50 percent up on the successful year of 2021. Overall, during the next two years the company wants to position itself as an as an indispensable partner of the industry that is a firm fixture in retailers’ collections. “In the short to midterm, our focus is on re-categorising, optimising and restructuring our assortments. In the future, B2B, platform and D2C assortments will be designed independently of each other, to give every revenue stream the necessary autonomy,” Ekinci concludes.